real life vs. competition life

[lilytran1998]

what do you think about real life and competition? in my opinion i think competitions should be harder in sparring. in real life there are no time limits and no judges that say that your contact is to hard. if children are learned to only compete they will not know what to do when they are on the ground, being pounded by a bully and no one is there saying stop.what is your opinion on all this? i would like to hear.

[andyb28]

I personally dont think so, in the last six months I have been training hard for point karate competitions. It's made me much faster all round and has given me better focus of openings as attacks come in.

When sparring at the club, a lot of our club members are not competition fighters, so they dont stop when a point would have been scored, this has actually been very handy for me as it forces me to get in, get the point and get out, just like in competition and I suppose in real life too.

Andy

[TonyU]

I personally dont think so, in the last six months I have been training hard for point karate competitions. It's made me much faster all round and has given me better focus of openings as attacks come in.

When sparring at the club, a lot of our club members are not competition fighters, so they dont stop when a point would have been scored, this has actually been very handy for me as it forces me to get in, get the point and get out, just like in competition and I suppose in real life too.

Andy

See, this is why I'm trying to stay away. That kind of competition and thinking will get you hurt. Point sparring is not anything like real life.

[Webmaster]

There is one very important difference between "real life" and competition and I can sum it up in one world... death. The difference in the two is all about the consequences for failure... and death is a whole lot more serious than disqualification or losing.

[jwinch2]

I think Andy actually agrees with you Tony.

From his comments I take that he thinks it is a good thing that he gets to train with people at his own school who do not point spar as that forces him to consider what is going to happen after a point would be scored rather than getting in the habit of assuming things are going to stop and reset from there.

Maybe I am reading things incorrectly. I haven't had any coffee yet this morning so that is a good possibility! LOL

Cheers,

[David Craik]

get the point and get out, just like in competition and I suppose in real life too.

This led me to understand Andy's post as Tony did. I've only seen a grand total of one 'point fighting' competition (with Budoseek's own Chrono), but it appears to resemble a game of tag more than anything realistic to me. I don't know if all of them are like this, but it was one of the oddest things I'd ever seen - guys were reaching over and tapping their opponent on top of the head and it seemed to count...

I think the idea of picking an opponent apart tenatively and piecemeal like this - in, out;in, out - IRL will get you killed for your trouble unless he is either ridiculously outclassed or little more than a lumbering mongoloid. Actual committed assaults I've seen simply don't go down like this very often.

[andyb28]

Sorry if my post was interpreted wrong, what I was trying to say was in a real fight, people do not stop once the point has been scored and if anyone was under the impression real fights go like this, they would be in for a serious pounding.

However, point fighting does make you very quick as it's key to winning in a competition that you dont get hit, are first to the punch/kick etc.

What I was trying to say about the dojo is we have a lot of high grades that have been at the club for years, they have seen it all come and go over time and are well seasoned fighters (but never done the competition stuff). If I scored with a reverse punch and stopped during sparring, they would punch me in the head having absorbed my punch. This I think is very good as it forces a tactical way of fighting and makes you a better rounded fighter.

There are also a number of high standard competition fighters in our organisation (usually the younger guys) that do well on the competition circuit, just because they fight in a point karate way does not mean they cant fight in other ways. Competition takes a lot of control, you are allowed to hit to the head/face, but it has to be controlled and light, you can also kick to the head, but the same rules apply, however, you can hit the body as hard as you want and you can sweep as long as it's followed up with a point scoring punch.

Additionally some of our point karate people participate in full contact competitions and adjust between one and another fairly well. So in summary I would say in our club competition fighters would cope fine in an out of the dojo scenario, I obviously cant speak of other clubs and organisations, I guess it depends on how much normal sparring they do.

Andy

[lilytran1998]

I do agree with parts of your commit Andy, for example when you practice for competitions and it makes you faster, but David did make an importent commit that some guys just tap heads and it seems to count. I have also seen some cases like this.
I still belive that real life fighting is way different than competition fighting, but sometimes competitions are what give kids the motivation to practice, but real life is still more dangerous when there is no on to say stop.

[andyb28]

Lily, I dont disagree with you, I have seen some real bad competitions, I guess sometimes it's hard for two learners to actually score so the ref looks for anything remotely like a score and awards it.

This generally doesn't happen at the upper end of the scale in terms of grades and experience. I have seen people knocked out, broken / bloody noses etc.

Also, I believe for juniors, they now say no face contact, but the punch needs to look like it would hit, but stop a short distance from actual contact.